THURSDAY MAY 17 2018 was the 75th anniversary of a major event in World War Two which had very significant Helensburgh connections.

Cinemas throughout the UK showed the epic and moving 1955 film “The Dam Busters”, starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd, which recreated the true story of Operation Chastise when in 1943 the RAF’s 617 Squadron attacked the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams in Nazi Germany with Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb

SOME of the best-known figures in Helensburgh history shared something else apart from living locally.

The Rev. John Baird, father of John Logie Baird, John Honeyman, the architect, Dr Fordyce Messer of ‘disappearing coachman’ fame, and the Anderson family of Helensburgh benefactors all belonged to the same organisation.